Saturday, August 23, 2008

An Introduction

The subtitle of this work is "A glossary of Contemporary and Future Life". It currently runs to about 300 pages, and I will publish them all here, entry by entry. In this first posting, I include some preliminary quotations, a foreword and a Table of Contents. The second posting contains the first entry, and so on.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institutions, - such I call good books. Henry David Thoreau

Cum relego, scripsisse pudet, quia plurima cerno,Me quoque qui feci judice, digna lini.Reading over what I have written, and despite being the author, I’m appalled to find so much that deserves to be crossed out.Ovid

I originally envisaged this little work as multi-authored - a literary forum perhaps with myself as editor. It hasn’t turned out that way, partly because I have made no serious attempt to arouse the interest of a conventional publisher, and partly because - as I now realize - this is a highly personal view of the world and its contents. It was born and grew out of anger (as such books often are and maybe should be), and out of bewilderment at the infinite duplicity and ruthlessness of humankind, at the nonsense we unearth in our search for meaning and purpose, and at the impossibility of finding a final answer - I mean the truth - about anything.

Since this is a glossary, entries are ordered alphabetically rather than thematically which means you can dip in and out at any point. Some are short and simple, others sufficiently complex to give me pause when I re-read them.

Mistakes doubtless abound - typographical, grammatical, logical, ontological, theological, and every other kind available to textual expression and human endeavour. Corrections welcome. But remember: this is an unedited draft; and my eyes glide over errors,....as though of hemlock I had drunk,Or emptied some dull opiate to the drainsOne minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk...(If Keats were alive, I’d apologize for quoting him here - but he isn’t).

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Why This Blog

My aim here is to "broadcast" essays, commentary, books, poetry and other material that have not been published elsewhere.
Conventionally, this area is reserved for a potted biography, but you can find this (together with more writings) on the website link given above where you'll also find a contact address.